


Exposure Therapy

by GraeWrites



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Ace!Roman, Angst, Internalized Aphobia, Lots of it, M/M, Misunderstanding, but comfort happens too, but its short lived, roman struggles with insecurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 21:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19093423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraeWrites/pseuds/GraeWrites
Summary: If Roman can practice enough scenarios, maybe the inevitable will hurt a little less. Hurt/Comfort Romantic Prinxiety. Ace!Roman.





	Exposure Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one sitting. One of those fics that comes from a personal space. An exploration of internalized aphobia—something that I’ve begun to learn does not go away after realizing you are ace. Edited by yours truly, so all mistakes are mine. <3 Love you all. Would love to know what you think!

Roman stares unseeing at the carpet right in front of Virgil’s sock-clad feet. Most of the lights are off, leaving only the lamp by the couch to cast the room in a soft warm glow. Part of Roman wishes he could turn it off and disappear into the darkness. Anything to avoid the confused, hurt look in Virgil’s eyes that he can feel pressing down on his shoulders.

“You’re ace?” Virgil’s voice seems to echo with disgust.

“I’m sorry, Virgil—” Roman reaches a hand out blindly. Virgil takes a step back.

He shoves his hands harshly into the pocket of his hoodie. “So… So what, you were just leading me on? This entire time? I mean…” He waves an arm. “What the hell, Roman?”

Roman clenches his jaw as his eyes burn. He blinks hard to clear them. “That wasn’t my intention. I just… I was just scared—”

Virgil scoffs. “Scared? Grow up, Princey.”

“Virge, I—”

Virgil is crossing the room and for the briefest second, Roman thinks maybe he’s walking towards him. But the Anxious Side brushes past Roman and starts to head up the stairs. “Save it. I don’t think this is gonna work out.” Then he’s gone. He’s vanished up the stairs and the Prince stands in the Commons alone with the silence until he hears Virgil slam his door shut.

Roman breathes out shakily. He presses a hand to his mouth as it if might steady the air leaving his lungs.

“Again,” he says aloud once he’s sure the word won’t tremble. “The kitchen, this time.”

The scene blurs around him in a swirl of fragmenting color. Roman waits, closing his eyes and bringing clarity to the image in his mind as it takes shape around him. He takes a few slow breaths before he opens his eyes. The kitchen is a perfect recreation of the one in the Mindscape that mirrors Thomas’s apartment.

Sunlight streams in through the window beside the refrigerator. Roman frowns, willing the sun to start setting. He doesn’t think he’d have this conversation in the middle of the day. He’d wait until the evening at least. The bright light fades into a soft orange and pink.

Roman swallows, bracing himself as he hears quiet footsteps behind him. He forces a small smile as he turns around.

“Virgil,” he greets, perhaps a little too brightly. “How are you, darling?”

Virgil quirks a suspicious eyebrow as he shuffles into the kitchen and grabs a mug from the cabinet. “Fine,” he says slowly. “Why are you acting weird?”

Roman swallows, trying to ignore the part of him that suddenly feels like throwing up. “I was wondering if you had a moment to talk.”

Roman sees the slightly defensive curl of Virgil’s shoulders around himself. “That’s never a good sign.”

“No, it’s—It’s nothing, really,” Roman tells him. He doesn’t know if it’s a lie. It feels like one. “But… well, can we sit?”

“Sure,” Virgil says slowly again, eyeing Roman as he takes a seat at the kitchen table. “But I’ll be honest, Princey, you’re kinda worrying me.”

“I’m sorry.” Roman folds his hands on the table and stares at them. “I just… we’ve been dating for a while now, and… there’s something that I’ve been pushing off telling you. And by doing so… I’m… maybe not being fair to you.”

Roman pauses, glancing up at Virgil across the table from him. The Anxious Side doesn’t say anything, instead opting to quirk an eyebrow at him as a silent encouragement to continue. Roman takes a breath. He squeezes his hands together as if he might be able to ground himself and keep the sudden wave of nausea at bay.

“I am asexual.”

Silence. Roman waits, every muscle braced for the inevitable.

“You’re unbelievable, Roman.” The edge in Virgil’s voice makes Roman suddenly want to be anywhere else. He stays rooted to his seat instead. “I mean, you know as well as I do that ‘asexuality’ or whatever the hell you want to call it isn’t a real thing.”

The chair scraping against the floor sounds like a scream. Roman thinks he can feel something breaking inside of him. He opens his mouth to speak—to explain—but the lump in this throat hardens before he can even get out Virgil’s name.

Virgil continues, oblivious. “I mean, I know you like to stand out, but c’mon. You can drop the whole ‘special snowflake’ label.”

“I—” Roman tries, but Virgil is gone.

The Creative Side scrubs a hand against burning eyes, gritting his teeth. “Again.”

The scene blurs, then clears.

It’s a nighttime picnic this time: a stargazing date, tailored specifically to Virgil. It’s one of their go-to places in the Mindscape when they wanted to go on a date. The first time Roman had suggested it and Virgil had agreed, the Prince had consulted Logan for how to make it as accurate as possible.

It’s quiet between them. A soft breeze plays in Virgil’s long bangs as he stares up at the sky. He looks peaceful. Content. Happy.

“Virgil… I’m ace,” Roman blurts out before he can lose his nerve entirely.

Virgil turns an incredulous, disbelieving gaze onto him. “You’re what?”

Roman’s hands curl against the blanket beneath them. “I’m… asexual.”

Virgil snorts, and Roman suddenly wishes he could dissolve into the ground. The Anxious Side shakes his head. “No, you aren’t.”

The Creative Side gathers what courage he has left and straightens up slightly. “Yes. I am.”

“Roman, you’re the Romantic Side. You can’t have it both ways.” Virgil shakes his head dismissively, looking back up at the sky. “I mean… nobody would want that, realistically.”

“But—”

“Like, I can wait until you’re comfortable or whatever but… you’re going to be comfortable with it  _eventually_.” He can feel Virgil’s suddenly piercing, demanding stare boring into him. “Right?”

“Right.” Roman’s voice sounds small even to his own ears.  

The world blurs. Then clears. A dinner date.

“ _Sex is like, a basic human need, Roman._ ”

“Again.”

A swirl of colors. The hallway.

“ _How do you know if you’ve never done it before? You’re just scared. You’ll come around eventually.”_

“Again.”

Roman’s room.

_“I need someone who can actually love me like an adult, Roman.”_

“Again.”

Virgil’s room.

_“You’ll be alone forever if you don’t get used to it.”_

The voices start to overlap, all of them Virgil’s, each harsher than the last. The world is blurry and Roman doesn’t know when he fell to his knees but he can’t bring any clarity to the space around him. The images swirl and Roman has his eyes screwed shut but all he can picture is Virgil’s face.

He buries his fingertips in his hair and covers his ears with his palms. Anything to block out the overlapping, deafening voices that ricochet around him.

He thinks he can hear his name being called—it sounds a little different from the rest of the voices—but it’s all unmistakably Virgil and Roman can’t bring himself to do anything but stay still. His stomach is rolling. A sob is fighting to break through his chest but Roman fights it down.

_The voices are right, after all._

Then Roman feels real, solid hands on him, covering his own hands on his head. His eyes fly open, jarred by the sudden contact that feels too real to be part of the Imagination. The confusion gives way to a caving feeling in his chest. It’s just Virgil, kneeling in front of him. Roman can’t see him that clearly—the world is blurry, but he could place that purple and black faltering image anywhere.

It makes sense, Roman supposes. He’d been picturing Virgil in his mind, after all.

He feels Virgil pull him against his chest. It somehow hurts more. The voices are still raging around him and the colors are swirling but Roman collapses a little into Virgil’s chest that feels so real and warm and solid. It’s not real, it can’t be, but it cracks something inside of Roman. The sob he’d been fighting releases in a sharp burst.

“Hey, hey, hey. I’ve got you,” says one of Virgil’s voices but it sounds softer than the rest of them. Closer somehow, too.

For a moment, Roman feels like his stomach drops suddenly. The feeling is followed immediately by a silence so sudden it leaves Roman’s ears ringing. The voices have stopped. And a moment later, Roman realizes that the warm, solid, tangible feeling of someone else didn’t disappear with the voices.

Roman sucks in a hiccupping, shaking breath. Then he opens his eyes. A purple shirt. A black and purple-plaid-patched hoodie sleeve. He breathes in and catches the scent of laundry detergent and something he couldn’t quite pinpoint but was nevertheless familiar.  _Virgil_.

Just past Virgil, Roman can see his canopy bed with red and gold pillows. They’re in his room. Out of the Imagination.

Roman pulls away from Virgil, flushing bright red. He ducks his head when he can feel Virgil’s gaze on him. He feels small. He doesn’t know how much Virgil—the  _real_  Virgil—heard. Or what he’d think of Roman now.

 _Which is stupid_ , Roman thinks to himself.  _Because that was exactly why you were doing that in the first place, Princey._

“Hey,” Virgil says in a soft voice. In his peripheral, Roman sees Virgil reach a hand up towards him, then seems to think twice. Roman’s chest constricts impossibly tighter. “You okay?” he asks quietly instead.

“I’m fine,” Roman manages.

“Bullshit.”

“Then why’d you ask?” He can’t bring himself to look above Virgil’s chest. He can’t look him in the eyes. He can’t.  _Coward_ , a voice hisses in the back of his mind.

There’s a pause. Then a sigh. Roman feels a hand against his cheek. The pad of a thumb brushing at the wetness of Roman’s cheeks. “Because I thought it was a nicer way to ask what the hell you were doing,” Virgil replies.  

Roman swallows. “Practicing.” He stares at the pattern in the light hardwood floor beneath his knees.

“Practicing? For what?”

Roman opens his mouth to answer.  _Now’s your chance to tell him_. _Just come out and tell him you’re ace._ The words get lost somewhere along the way up his throat. Roman closes his mouth and shakes his head and says something easier instead. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Roman,” Virgil says, more firmly this time. “Look at me.”

“It’s fine, Virgil. I’m fine—”

“Ro,  _please_.”

Roman’s eyes flit up to latch onto Virgil’s. His brows are pulled together in concern, and his gaze bores into Roman’s like he’s searching for something he can’t find. He still has his hand against Roman’s cheek and the Prince wants to both lean into it and pull away. He stays still instead.

“I’m sorry,” Roman finds himself saying. He swallows down the urge to repeat those words again and again and again. As if this Virgil—the real one—had been the one he’d hurt over and over and over…

Virgil swallows. “What was I saying to you back there?”

The Creative Side freezes, then blinks quickly to recover. “Nothing of importance.”

“Stop doing that,” Virgil snaps, something sharp flashing through his eyes. “I know it was my voice, Roman. But I was a little… preoccupied to make out what I was saying.”

“It was my own fault, really,” Roman tells him in a whisper. He stops, then tries to clear his throat and speaks a little louder. “I just thought… maybe if I could… get used to all of the bad options, I’d be better prepared for the inevitable, you know?”

“Bad options?” Virgil shakes his head. “What does that mean?”

Roman averts his gaze. He feels suddenly very tired. “Nothing. Just… I was just… practicing a conversation.” He pulls away from Virgil’s hand against his jaw.

Virgil’s hand hovers in the air a moment before curling and falling into his lap. “A conversation with me?”

Roman sighs. “Yeah.”

“A conversation… about what?” There’s something off about Virgil’s voice, but it’s all Roman can do to keep talking and not run entirely.

He takes in a deep breath. It’s still a little shaky, and Roman curls his hands against his thighs. “About… me. About the fact that I’m…. asexual.”

There’s a beat— _there’s always a beat, always a pause, always the calm right before the storm_ —and Roman wants to push off the inevitable anger, pain, hurt as long as he can so he lets the words spill past his lips.

“And I know I should have told you a long time ago, but it just never seemed like an okay time. But I know that’s stupid, and it wasn’t fair to you, and I totally led you on, but I just thought maybe eventually it would come up, or you would ask and I could just say ‘yes’ because that’s easier, I guess. It’s easier to confirm than to announce something like that, because if I announce it then it changes everything and I didn’t want anything to change, I didn’t want you to look at me differently because when you look at me I feel like I could do anything and—”

“You…” Virgil cuts in and Roman’s jaw snaps shut, cutting off the words with an almost audible snap. “You were… you were practicing coming out scenarios where I react badly, weren’t you?” The question is asked carefully. Measured. Like something sits just below the surface of it but Roman doesn’t know what lies beneath.

The prince carefully avoids Virgil’s gaze. He nods wordlessly.

“Why?” Roman doesn’t understand why Virgil’s voice sounds a little choked.

Roman laughs but it’s breathy and airy and humorless, tied carefully together with a thread of self-loathing. “Because… I thought it’d make it more bearable when it actually comes. Thought maybe I’d be less of a coward or something if I’ve already sat through it once.”

“Roman… listen…”

And here it comes. The storm is back, the calm abated. And Roman wonders if the practice actually helped because it is hard to imagine a feeling more painful than the one in his chest at this moment. He’s staring unseeing at the rips in Virgil’s jeans. He thinks maybe this is for the best after all. Virgil will find someone he can be happy with—maybe Logan, maybe Patton—and Roman is better off alone, anyway, right? He can go on adventures, avoid distractions and focus on creating—

“I’m so sorry,” Virgil says. His voice sounds thick.

Roman’s throat is tightening. “Don’t be,” he says hollowly because it’s all he has left. He just wants to go to sleep. He’s been through this scenario dozens of times now.  _This is just one more_ , he tells himself as if it will alleviate some of the crushing feeling. “I get it.”

“What?” Virgil’s confusion rings clear in his voice, but it’s shadowed a second later by realization. “Wait… shit, Roman, that’s not what I meant—”

“Virgil, I don’t really need a long speech or anything,” Roman tells him, scrubbing a hand down his face. “It’s okay. I’m not mad at you.”

“I am.”

Roman blinks, his gaze flitting up to meet Virgil’s. His brow creases in confusion at the bright, earnest look in Virgil’s eyes. “What?”

Virgil rakes a hand back through his hair. There’s something a little pained in Virgil’s eyes that makes Roman’s chest twist. Roman opens his mouth—he wants to apologize, he never wanted to be a source of pain for Virgil again—but Virgil holds up a hand to cut him off.

“I… You were so afraid to tell me that you’re ace, Roman. And I feel like that’s on me. I mean, you were calling my rejection of you—of who you are—‘inevitable’, for crying out loud. I never…” Virgil’s voice seems to die in his throat. He swallows, blinks hard, then tries again. “If I made it seem like you couldn’t come out to me, after everything… I mean, God, you were  _torturing_  yourself over it…”

“Not you,” Roman blurts out. Virgil stops suddenly, and Roman struggles to find the words again. “It wasn’t you. I just… I’ve heard some variation of all of it before. And I just… I was scared. Not because of anything you did or said, but just… rejection seems inevitable at this point.” Is he making sense? Roman doesn’t know. But he keeps talking because at this point, if he stops now, he thinks maybe he’ll never say it again.

“It’s… everywhere,” Roman presses on, silently begging Virgil to understand. “It’s  _supposed to be important_  to me, right? And sometimes I think life would be easier if it was, but…” Roman’s eyes are starting to burn a little again. “I don’t want it, and I don’t…”  _want to lose you_. Roman can’t bring himself to voice it. He can’t have it both ways. That was really what being ace meant, right? Roman had come to accept that a long time ago. He shakes his head, wrapping his arms around himself. “But it’s not fair to you to keep lying. To keep you waiting for something I’m never going to want. You… deserve someone who can love you in all the ways you need—” Roman cuts himself off when Virgil cups his face in both of his hands.

Virgil’s dark gaze is searching his again, something imploring behind his irises. “I have that already.”

_Wait… what?_

Virgil reads the uncertainty on Roman’s face and softens, leaning his forehead against Roman’s . “You are ace, Roman. That’s part of who you are. It’s not something you should apologize for, and it’s sure as hell not something you should punish yourself for.”

“I… Virgil—”

“You love me,” Virgil continues with quiet, unwavering conviction. “You show me literally every single day. You make me coffee in the morning and know to sneak in two spoonfuls of sugar when nobody is watching. You check in on me when I’m having a bad day. You distract me with Disney theories when I’m getting overwhelmed. You listen when I need to vent or talk no matter how busy you are. You plan dates with me specifically in mind. You write me love letters on like, a weekly basis, and you let me fall asleep listening to your heartbeat when I’m having a bad night.”

Roman feels Virgil press soft lips to his forehead. “I love you,” Roman finds himself saying.

“I know,” Virgil replies softly. “That is all the love I need, Ro. I promise.” He touches his forehead to Roman’s again.

Roman swallows. “But—”

“Do you trust me?”

Roman manages a watery smile at the Disney reference. “What?”

He can hear the soft smile in the Anxious Side’s voice too. “Do you trust me?”

Roman nods a little and pulls back to look up at Virgil. “Yes.”

“Good.” Virgil looks straight into Roman’s eyes as he brushes his thumb along Roman’s cheek. “Then trust me when I say that you are enough. You will  _always_  be enough, just as you are.”


End file.
